Stage 1 - Cav suffers from attack of nerves

We all know the bunch can be "nervous" on the first week of the Tour..... in the world of cycling, "nervous" is a euphemism to mean liable to crashing. In fact, there were a couple of "nervous" riders in yesterday's prologue, who lost it on some of those wet corners. So it was DNS this morning for Mathias Frank and Manuel Antonio Leal Cardoso, making them the first riders to drop out of the race. Can't say I blame them, that shit looks painful.

Today's stage set off in fairly pleasant weather, and it wasn't long before the first attack came. Among the escapees was popular fantasy pick, Lars Boom. I was hoping he'd hang on till the finish, but unfortunately for my team...... and for potential puns, he was back in the bunch before the finish. There was the odd crash earlier on, the best of which was an Ivan Basso/Dog incident.... it reminded me of that time I hit a cat on Stockton Lane. I've obviously got better handling skills than Basso though, as I didn't fall off. Most of the juicy crashes happened in the last km or so. Here's the action courtesy of a popular video sharing website, it's in French, but if you know that the French for 'crash' is 'chute' and the French for 'big crash' is 'gross chute', then you'll get the idea.



So, first we had Cav and Jeremy Hunt getting into a bit of a tussle on a tight corner and taking out Oscar Friere - so no Velogames or sprint competition points for any of them. Then we had a big old pile-up with just about everyone going down. Up front, the remaining sprinters looked to be staying out of trouble, until some Frenchy rode into the back of Tylar Farrar. Just like at the Tour De Suisse, it was the experienced Italian Alessandro Petacchi who emerged from all the carnage to take the win, followed by Cav's lead-out man Mark Renshaw and my boy Thor Hushovd.

There's no scoring update as I write this, so instead of speculating too much  about who's where in the minileague, lets look ahead to tomorrow. We should see the imaginatively titled, stage 2, from Brussels to Spa. It's a bit lumpy towards the end and that final climb could rule-out some of the sprinters. I predict a win for Nicholas Roche, as I'm hoping for big things from him in the Tour this year, plus no one else seems to have picked him.